Five minutes later she lifted her eyebrows in surprise. As he reinserted himself halfway across the portals of the realm where she queened it his recent moroseness was quite gone from him. About him now was the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that here stood one who, after profound cogitation, had found out what ailed him and, by the finding out, was filled with a gentle, chastened satisfaction. He seated himself on the kitchen door-step, facing outward so that comparative safety might be attained with a single flying leap did her uncertain temper, flaring up suddenly, lead her to acts of hostility before he succeeded in winning her over. He uttered a long-drawn sigh, then sat a minute in silence. In silence, too--a suspicious, menacing silence--she glared at him. "Aunt Dilsey," he ventured, speaking over his shoulder, with his face averted from her, "mebbe you been noticin' yere lately I seemed kind of downcasted an' shiftless, lak ez ef I had a mood on me?" "Has I noticed it?" she repeated--"huh!" The punctuating grunt was non-committal. It might mean nothing; it might mean anything. He cleared his throat and went on, "An', mebbe--I ain't sayin' you actually is; I's sayin' it with a mebbe--mebbe you been marvelin' in yore mind whut it wuz w'ich pestered me an' made me ack so kind of no-'count?" "I ain't needin' to marvel," she stated coldly. "I knows. Laziness! Jes' pyure summer-time nigger laziness, wid a rich streak of meanness th'owed in." "Nome, you is wrong," he corrected her gently. "You is wrong there. 'Ca'se likewise an' furthermo' I also is been off my feed--ain't that a sign to you?" "Sign of a tapeworm, I 'spects." "Don't say that, please, Ma'am," he humbly pleaded. "You speakin' in sich a way meks me 'most discouraged to confide in you whut I aims to confide in you. I'm tellin' it to you the fust one, too. 'Tain't nary 'nother soul heared it. Aunt Dilsey, I's grateful to you in my heart, honest I is, fur runnin' me 'way frum yore presence yere jes' a little w'ile ago. You never knowed it at the time--I didn't s'picion it also neither--but you done me a favor. 'Ca'se settin' out yonder in the stable all alone and ponderin' deep, all of a sudden somethin' jes' come right over me an' I knowed whut's been the matter wid me lately. Aunt Dilsey, I's felt the quickenin' tech." "Better fur you ef somebody made you feel de quickenin' buggy-whup." He disregarded the brutal suggestion.